Bloodrush (Scarlet Star Trilogy #1)

Chapter 1 - To the Lost

April 18th - 1867

'To the lost.' The surgeon raised his tiny glass with a gloved and rather bony hand.

Tonmerion Hark did the same, though he could only summon the wherewithal to raise it halfway. He let it hover just beneath his chin, as if he were cradling it to his chest. The liquor smelled like cloves. Sickening.

However he tried, he couldn't tear his gaze away from the pistol. That sharp-edged contraption of humourless steel and stained oak, lounging in an impossibly-clean metal tray at the elbow of his father's body.

'The lost,' he murmured in reply, and flicked the glass as if swatting at a bothersome bluebottle.

A pair of wet slapping sounds broke the sterile, white-tiled silence as the liquor painted a muddy-orange streak on the milky vinyl floor. So that was that. What precious little ceremony was over. Lord Karrigan Bastion Hark, the Bulldog of London, the Prime Lord of The Empire of Britannia, the Master of the Emerald Benches and widower of the inimitable Lady Hark, had been pronounced dead.

As a doornail.

Tonmerion could have told them that from the start, but such was tradition. His gaze inched from the gun to his father's pallid skin, bruised as it was with the blood settling. Or the surgeon had told him, as he had worked. Tonmerion had decided he did not like surgeons. They were rude; being so bold as to poke around in the visceral depths of other people. Of boys' dead fathers.

His gaze moved to the neatly sewn-up hole in his father's chest, directly above his heart. The oozing had finally stopped. The puckered and rippled edges of white skin around the black thread were clean. Not a single drop of corpse-blood seeping through. Not surprising, thought Tonmerion, seeing as so much of it had been left on the steps of Harker Sheer's western garden.

For a brief moment, the boy's eyes flicked to the closed lids of his father's. He thanked the Almighty those sharp sapphire eyes were hidden away, and not bathing him with disappointment, as was their custom. But even then, in the grip of cold death, Tonmerion could almost feel their gaze piercing those grey eyelids and jabbing him. His own eyes quickly slunk away.

Instead, he looked to the surgeon, and was somewhat startled to find the man staring directly back at him, arms folded and waiting patiently.

'And what now?' Tonmerion piped up, his young voice cracking after the silence.

'The constable will be here in a moment, I'm sure.'

'Is he late?' asked Tonmerion, biting the inside of his lip. The body was so grey...

The surgeon looked a smidgeon confused. He pushed the wire-frame rims of his round glasses up the slope of his nose. 'I beg your pardon, Master Hark?'

Tonmerion huffed. 'I said, is he late?'

The surgeon looked almost confused. 'No, young master. Simply finishing the paperwork.'

Tonmerion went to scratch his neck as he tried to think up something clever, and commanding. Gruff words echoed through his mind. Get your chin up. Stand straight. Look them straight in their beady little eyes... Words from dead lips.

'Then he must have been late earlier in the day. Why else would he not be here, on time, when I am ready to leave. Instead I am forced to stand here, stuck looking at this... this...' His words failed him miserably. His tongue sat fat and useless behind his teeth. He waved his hand irritably. 'This... carcass.'

For that was what it was. Carcass. So callous in its truth. Tonmerion could see it in the surgeon's face. That condemning curl in that hairless, sweat-beaded top lip of his.